I am an over-achieving jogger who has accomplished more in marathon running than I ever thought possible, and now I've turned my efforts to triathlons and am shooting for my first Ironman sometime in 2010. My hope is to inspire, encourage and motivate athletes of all ages and abilities.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Note to Beginners: Follow-Up to Yesterday's Post

I ran my 7.5 mile route this morning in 57:12 (about a 7:38 overall pace per mile, last mile in 7:35) and felt fantastic from start to finish. Had I forced the issue on my run yesterday, I guarantee you the run this morning would not have been a good one. Learn to take your lumps (and here's the hard part) and be happy about it.

Whenever you feel alone and frustrated in your training, take heart, ALL of us feel that way at one time or another. You simply have to improvise, adapt and overcome. I will never forget when I ran my first Boston Marathon in 2000 and walked into the Niketown store in downtown Boston. In a glass case was a running journal and some of the hand-written entries in it read something like, "Today my legs felt like lead weights were in them", or "Today I went out to do a fast run and just had a miserable experience", or "Today was really a great day and makes all the training worth it.", etc. I'm sure these sound similar to days you have had along your journey. By the way, this was Joan Benoit Samuelson's journal prior to winning the gold medal at the 1984 Olympics. See, you're not alone.

About Me

After achieving (ok, over-achieving) more in running than I ever believed possible, I have now set my sites on doing an Ironman sometime in 2010.
My real passion is to inspire others towards their goals through my web site, Faithful Soles which is dedicated to motivating athletes of all ages and abilities. I also have on Faithful Soles what I believe to be the only categorized and searchable multi-sport athlete Blog Database on the internet where members may find blogs of interest to them by selecting categories such as age, sex, location, experience level, and events completed and/or in training for, as well as a brief description of what each blog is about. You can also link your own blog to the database (just click on "Blog Database" in the main menu on the home page and then click on the "Link your blog for free" button on the right-hand side of that page).